Avian [Bird] Flu Scare: White House Conference
By J. Grant Swank Jr. (10/07/05)
"Now you have all these viruses going around and we don't know, is it going to adapt to humans? Is it going to cause a pandemic? We don't understand the rules. There is a lot of science to go," warns Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of the molecular pathology department at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington. This is according to New York Times’ Gina Kolata and Gardiner Harris.
"There is a lot of science to go." That’s what is frightening. The pandemic could spread, killing an estimated billion. Yet scientists are not ready for any such global outbreak.
US President George W. Bush referred to the pandemic possibility in this week’s news conference. He appeared not wanting to overly scare the public; yet on the other hand he sounded serious in his intent on coming upon a vaccine.
He even spoke of possible quarantines and maybe using the military to see through such measures. However, the question is raised as what to do with the military if the killing virus sweeps them away. Further, we are far from having the needed vaccine to withstand a pandemic.
"President Bush this week asked the leaders of the world's top vaccine manufacturers - Chiron, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck - to come to the White House on Friday, today, to discuss preparations for pandemic flu," the New York Times reports. In other words, one can interrupt this as emergency mode activated.
Earlier this week, Mr. Bush spoke to the United Nations Summit in New York in which he stated: "We must remain on the offensive against new threats to public health, such as the Avian influenza. If left unchallenged, the virus could become the first pandemic of the 21st century."
"If we had a significant worldwide epidemic of this particular avian flu, the H5N1 virus, and it hit the United States and the world, because it would be everywhere at once, I think we would see outcomes that would be virtually impossible to imagine," warns Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
There is much talk about the 1918 influenza outbreak that killed 50 million persons. Now that virus has been discovered in two soldiers and a woman who were victims of that epidemic. The find is considered exceptionally significant to scientific research in locating a solution vaccine.
The studies have underlined the logic regarding concern about bird flu viruses — H5N1 — that are showing up in Asia now. "In recent weeks the fear that a transformation of one of the current bird flus could make it infectious in humans has prompted politicians of both major parties to scramble to demonstrate that they are taking the threat of an avian flu outbreak seriously."
One of the problems regarding bird flu viruses is that they are evolving. There are changes going on concerning H5N1. Therefore, it’s catch-as-catch-can in the laboratories. Evolving viruses moving about at will could translate into widespread transmission among peoples.
Looking back to the Influenza of 1918, one doctor referred to it as a "dark angel hovering over us." As the virus then spread, it moved exceptionally quickly. Actually, the virus at that time preferred the healthy and young individuals.
"Alfred W. Crosby, author of ‘American's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918,’ said that it ‘killed more humans than any other disease in a similar duration in the history of the world.’"
No wonder then the conference at the White House. No wonder the anxiousness from world leaders at the United Nations Summit recently. Yet all persons involved admit that they are much too late in getting down to business. If a pandemic were set loose today, there would be global sweeps of the disease laying low large numbers.
"In human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow on global health policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings."
Copyright © 2005 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.
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